Thursday, January 29, 2015

Recently, there has been a lot of talk about “the good
old days” of Cantopop and how the HK music industry has changed so much from its
glory days back in the 1980s and 1990s.
Coincidentally, I was listening to my Ipod yesterday and a classic song
from the 80s came up that suddenly made me feel very nostalgic. It’s a song I love and I’ve listened to it so
many times over the past several decades that I practically have the lyrics memorized
by now. Given how badly the HK music
industry has deteriorated in recent years, listening to this song again made me
feel particularly nostalgic, to the point that I went and pulled the music
video for the song so I could re-watch it and remember those days when we truly
had such great talent in the music industry.

The song is called 地球大合唱 which
is loosely translated into English as “The Earth Sings in Chorus”. Those of you who grew up in the 80s like I
did might remember this song (it’s hard to forget actually given what a big hit
it was back then) – but for the benefit of those who are not familiar with this
song, let me give a little bit of background….

地球大合唱 was a special charity song that
TVB produced back in 1987 to commemorate their 20th
anniversary. For such an important song, TVB invited
renowned composer Joseph Koo (顧嘉煇) and lyricist
Richard Lam (林振強) to write the song and had many of
their ‘contracted’ singers (yes, TVB required all singers to sign contracts
with them, even back then) participate in singing it. Well, since practically every singer in HK
was ‘contracted’ to TVB in some way back then, they obviously had plenty of
choices -- so you can just imagine how many ‘big names’ participated (of
course, not every singer was there, as only a portion of the singers
participated in the production…but enough ‘big names’ participated to make this
song an instant hit when it first came out).

The song was recorded as a special two-sided vinyl record
(remember, this was the 80s, so it was the era of cassette tapes, video tapes,
and vinyl records, lol) and released in 1987 – all proceeds from sales of the
album went to charity. Side one was the
actual song (it’s close to 7 minutes long!) and side two consisted of ‘messages
of compassion’ from all the singers who participated in the production of the
song.

I went ahead and posted a Youtube link to the song
below. Note that this is the full song
(side A of the original record) plus the ‘messages of compassion’ from the
singers (side B) – the song itself is a little under 7 minutes, so for those of
you who want to watch the MV only, just watch the first 7 minutes or so (out of
the many versions of this song that were posted on Youtube, I chose this
particular one because it’s the most complete – the other versions are shorter,
but some parts are cut off at the beginning or at the end).

Along with the video, I’ve posted a list of all the
artists who participated in the song – both the soloists in the first part as
well as the rest of the singers who didn’t get their own segment but got to
participate in the chorus. [Sidenote:
Obviously, the artists who got to sing solo were the ones who were more popular
in the music industry at the time.]

I’m sure many of you who didn’t grow up in the 80s will
probably still recognize quite a few of the singers in here, as many of them
were still active in the 90s and after 2000s time period (though a few of them
already retired or are less active in the music industry nowadays…and a few of
them already passed away -- including the song’s famed lyricist Richard Lam).

This song as well as its corresponding MV is indeed a ‘classic’!
While I always enjoying listening to the
song and watching the MV, it also saddens me sometimes because it’s a reminder
once again that the HK music industry will never get back to what it once
was. Not only that, we will also never
see again the type of UNITY that defined the HK music industry (and the HK
entertainment industry as a whole, to some extent) back then. I know I shouldn’t be so negative, but sorry,
I can’t help it….

P.S.: As I stated earlier, I often listen to this
song without watching the MV and interestingly enough, I’m able to recognize
exactly which artist sings which verse.
When I think about this, I’m reminded of something that many veteran
singers always say: back in the old
days, practically every singer had their own distinctive vocals and singing
styles, which not only made the singers easily recognizable, but also
contributed to a unique, fresh, and strong music industry. Nowadays, most of the newer generation
singers sound largely the same, as though they are mimicking each other’s
styles rather than coming up with a unique style all their own. I
actually can’t help but agree because I’ve actually experienced this myself –
when I listen to HK music programs on the radio nowadays and I hear them play
one new song after another, I often can’t tell who the artists singing the
songs are because many of them sound the same.

P.P.S.: Those who are familiar with the music
industries outside of HK might remember that the U.S. and Taiwan also had
similar campaigns back in the 80s where the music industry’s biggest names
gathered for a charitable cause. In the
U.S., over 80 artists gathered together in 1985 to sing “We Are the World” as
part of the USA for Africa campaign…that same year, in Taiwan, over 60 artists
gathered to sing 明天會更好(“Tomorrow Will Be Better”). I
bring this up because HK’s 地球大合唱
is often compared to both of these charity campaigns, though of course, the
HK/TVB version was much smaller scale with less than 40 artists involved (not
saying whether that’s good or bad – just a relevant fact that is worth
mentioning).

****

Here’s the MV and the list of singers. How
many singers do you recognize????

[Note that George
Lam and Alan Tam weren’t actually present during the taping of the MV, but they
were present during the actual recording of the song, so their lines were incorporated into the MV as well].